


Equal Measure

by misszeldasayre



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Curse Breaking, Drama, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Emotional Manipulation, F/M, Fairy Tale Curses, Hurt/Comfort, Kylo Ren Lives, Pining, Sharing a Bed, Strangers to Lovers, The Force Is Replaced By Magic (Star Wars)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-14
Updated: 2021-02-21
Packaged: 2021-03-18 00:15:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29234400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misszeldasayre/pseuds/misszeldasayre
Summary: When Princess Rey of Coruscant calls upon the cursed Sir Kylo Ren to help her escape her grandfather’s political machinations, she discovers freedom in the ancient familial magic that binds them together and the growing attraction that threatens to tear them apart.
Relationships: Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 15
Kudos: 101
Collections: To Find Your Kiss: The Reylo Fanfiction Anthology's Valentine's Day Exchange





	1. The Bargain

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dustoftheancients](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustoftheancients/gifts).



> For the prompt:
> 
> "Medieval or fantasy AU. I’m down for anything! Maybe something involving a curse?"
> 
> Many thanks to my alpha and beta readers, [ astraea](https://twitter.com/rxyaldyad) (master of continuity) and [ Padawan_Writer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Padawan_Writer/pseuds/Padawan_Writer) (master of characterization, inner monologues, and flow)! 💜

Emperor Palpatine’s fingertips spark blue in warning when Princess Rey of Coruscant meets her betrothed for the first time. The princess notes her grandfather’s sparking hands and schools her disgust into faint enthusiasm, too dim to power her smile but bright enough to fool Lord Hux, that simpering buffoon. As he bows to kiss her hand, Rey forces herself not to flinch and watches her grandfather, ruler over the Seven Sectors, nod in satisfaction.

His satisfaction comes at a price, Rey has learned over the years, a price she pays by gritting her teeth and pushing through the pain. When he demanded she give up swordplay with the blacksmith’s boy in the training yard, she acquiesced although the loss stung worse than the bruises from their training swords. When he named her heir to the throne, she allowed him to place a heavy crown on her head in front of the whispering court which questioned why the emperor saw fit to anoint a girl too young to rule. When he declared she must take a husband, she curtsied so low he couldn’t see her frown. But meeting Lord Hux three days before their wedding ceremony leaves Rey unsure that she can pay the price this time to keep her grandfather content.

Hux grins at Emperor Palpatine, the corners of his mouth stretched artificially wide. “Your majesty, I must say you understated your granddaughter’s beauty.” He finally releases Rey’s hand; she fights the urge to wipe his sweat on her skirt. “Princess, you’ll make a beautiful bride.”

“If the Force wills it,” Rey replies, her steady voice and hands concealing her rising distress. Hux takes her words as a blessing and grins that smarmy smile that sends goosebumps skittering down Rey’s spine. After a lifetime of her grandfather’s smiles, which precede all kinds of madness, she can predict what a lifetime with Hux might entail.

But her misgivings cannot stave off the inevitable: her future as a bride of nineteen years old—too old by today’s standards, her mother declares in her reedy voice reserved to cheer Rey up after receiving another demand from the emperor. Rey knows no good will come out of complaining to her parents, who bend at the emperor’s every whim, so she sews shut her lips and stiffens her spine as Lord Hux leers at her from across the dais. His eyes trace her bodice’s low neckline and cinched waist, carving up Rey like slabs of meat at the butcher’s. For the third time that evening, she curses her mother for forcing her into a gown so revealing and an alliance so unwelcome.

The gown, with its tight bodice and long train, fights Rey as she stands to take Hux’s proffered arm. He pays no mind to her struggle, painting on another ingratiating smile and remarking on the pleasure of her company. That’s how she knows he’s a liar, or a fool so wrapped up in his own fantasies that he can’t see what’s at his elbow: an unhappy girl hiding behind a mask of courtesy and rouge. She takes no pleasure in his simpering manner, nor his sickly sweet odor that reminds her of her grandfather.

Hux’s retinue trails them to the great hall, soldiers armored in gleaming steel and stiff red cloaks. They flank the couple, driving Rey closer to Hux. She tries to remain placid as his breath tickles her neck. “Today is the beginning of a new era,” he says. “Soon our two houses will unite in power. And I do look forward to that… uniting.” He watches the insinuation wash over Rey, frowning slightly when she doesn’t react. Then he winds his free hand around her fingers clutching his bicep, tugging her closer and digging crescent moons into her knuckles.

The contact, the innuendo, the sickly sweet smell—it all becomes too much. Rey knows she’ll pay for it later, but right now she needs to put distance between herself and her fiancé. As she tears away from his grip, she stumbles into the nearest soldier. They clatter to the floor in a tangle of skirts and cloaks and clumsy feet.

Rey hardly stutters out a proper apology before the soldier leaps to his feet and pulls her up from the floor, but the damage is done. The emperor looms behind them, distaste etched across his wrinkled face.

“Your Imperial Majesty,” the soldier begins, but Palpatine reaches toward him, closing his fist around air as indigo smoke pours from his grip. The soldier gasps for breath, clawing at his throat as the smoke encircles his purpling cheeks. He slumps to the floor, still clutching his throat in an indigo plume that reeks of rotted plums and bitter malla petals. The stench of death.

Lord Hux exchanges the briefest glance with Rey, startled like an ash-rabbit spotted too close near a snare. Then he turns to Palpatine and lets out a guffaw that drowns out the dying man’s wheezes. “Datoo always was a clumsy fellow.”

Palpatine’s lips curl. “See that none of your men jeopardize my granddaughter’s safety again, Lord Hux. I want to be certain she will be kept in good hands. After all, she is the key to Coruscant.”

“Indeed she is.” Hux’s smile grows teeth, and Rey discovers the man at her side is no fool, but a man with the appetites of an emperor. She can’t think of anything else as she chokes down the welcome feast.

Once Lord Hux’s retinue departs the great hall for their chambers and Rey retreats to the privacy of her tower, she bats away her old nursemaid’s hands and tears off her gown. It sags to the floor, a silky imitation of the murder that’s sure to haunt her dreams tonight. She sinks into bed, her own throat tight with unshed screams. Soon she’ll be forced to sleep alongside a stranger who laughed when one of his guards was slaughtered in plain view.

Choking back her sobs becomes a futile endeavor once Maz perches at her side and runs a gnarled hand through her hair, unpinning the intricate buns marching down Rey’s head. Only once her hair and tears flow freely can she breathe again, inhaling the familiar cinnamon and apricot cloud that hangs around Maz. It overpowers the lingering stench of decay.

“I can’t do this,” she tells her nursemaid. The Palpatine signet weighs heavily around her neck; she takes a grim comfort in its steady presence as Maz draws the covers over her trembling body.

“You can,” Maz says because she’s never sweetened the truth before and she won’t do it now. “You can and you will. But dear child, I had such hopes for you.”

“What can I do?” Rey asks long after the tapers are blown out and the thick kriin-wood doors are bolted shut. Maz hesitates so long to reply that Rey wonders if she’s fallen asleep.

“Keep that hope alive.” Maz glances pointedly around the room, her message clear: they don’t know who’s listening. Not when the emperor is scheming so. “You’ve grown so much, dear child. Only three more nights and you’ll be a bride. Indulge an old woman. Let me tell you one last bedtime tale.”

Rey longs to lose today in sleep, but Maz seems bent on sharing some message, so she agrees.

“You remember the tragedy of Sir Vader.” Although Maz remains perched on the bed alongside Rey, her voice transports them to a bygone era. “Your grandfather had just ascended the throne after his father’s untimely death. Many in the Naboo province wondered if a man as young as Sheev was ready to rule the Seven Sectors.”

Maz’s first warning radiates starkly like moonlight spilling through Rey’s tower window: do not trust the emperor. But her warm tone betrays none of the warning as she continues. “Sir Vader fought by your grandfather’s side to reclaim Naboo as it threatened to break from the Seven Sectors. His bravery and cunning on the battlefield saved many Coruscanti lives.”

“Vader was injured in battle.” Since the rest of the details blur in Rey’s memory, she listens close for another message buried within the story.

Maz nods. “Sheev healed Vader, but at a steep cost. In order for the Force to give, it must take in equal measure.” Rey remembers years ago urging Maz to get to the good part. She never contemplated the healing’s price. “Vader lived, swearing to serve Sheev until the end of their days.”

“Didn’t Vader break his promise?”

“Only a few years later when he fell in love with Lady Amidala of Naboo. When he got her pregnant, Sheev looked the other way. But when the Bespin Rebellion broke and Sheev needed his knight, Vader refused to leave Amidala’s side.”

“For good reason!”

“Because Vader broke his promise to first serve the emperor, Sheev cursed Vader’s posterity to serve the Palpatine line until the end of their days.” Maz rests a hand on Rey’s necklace. “To call a Skywalker in times of distress, a Palpatine must press their signet to the ground and thrice speak the Skywalker name. At least that’s what they say.”

Rey wonders how her old nursemaid’s ramblings inform her current situation. She already knows her grandfather is dangerous, armed with the Force and a will to conquer all. What use does she have for children’s tales of curses and broken vows?

She doesn’t say any of that to Maz, who bids her rest well. But later that night, as sleep evades her and the moonlight taunts her waking nightmare, Rey stumbles from her bed to the stone floor. The cold seeps from the stones through her shift. As she grows numb, she also grows desperate. The legends about Sir Vader and the Skywalker line may not be true. However, Rey finds some solace in the act of calling for assistance. Futile, yes. But her own choice, unlike the marriage alliance waiting for her in the morning. She presses her signet necklace to the ground, and whispers the Skywalker name three times before she can convince herself that it’s foolish to wish for a future without a scheming lord by her side. No one turns up to rescue her, so she falls asleep dreaming of an endless sea.

* * *

A knight in scuffed black armor is waiting in Rey’s tower chamber when she returns from a fitting with the royal seamstress the afternoon before her wedding. With broad shoulders and a shield without sigil, he’s no Order of the Storm initiate, yet no man outside of the emperor’s private guard should have access to the princess’s bedroom. She has half a mind to scream, but something about his presence resonates deep inside her.

He points to the Palpatine crest dangling from her neck. “You called me.” While she gawks, stunned at the kernel of truth hidden in Maz’s story, he crooks his black-helmeted head. “Ah, but you didn’t expect me.”

She hadn’t expected the summons to work, but here stands a Skywalker made flesh. A ticket to freedom. His presence reduces her mind to a string of questions too knotted to unravel. “So the legends are true,” she murmurs before realizing she’s speaking out loud. She can’t have him thinking she’s foolish as she prepares to request his aid. Attempting to regain some control over her reaction, she asks, “What took you so long?”

“I sailed from Chandrila.”

Something about his claim doesn’t sit well with Rey. Perhaps because she knows that the journey across the Silver Sea should take two months, not two days. Perhaps because his gaze is a little too eager, his posture a little too hungry.

But what other option does she have? Refuse his services and she’ll find herself married to Hux at sunrise. So she lets the door swing shut and nods. “I called you because I have need of your services, Sir…”

“Kylo Ren,” he supplies, voice gravelly and low from within his helmet. He makes no move to remove it as Rey steps closer, peering at the fairytale made flesh.

“Well, Sir Ren, tomorrow I must marry a man I hardly know.” A man who laughs at murder.

“Congratulations, Princess.”

She bristles instinctively at his dismissal, her title a taunt on his tongue. He sounds nothing like the heroes from Maz’s stories. So she adopts an approach befitting a princess, hoping it conceals her apprehension. “You’ll do well to remember that I called you here.” Though she hates herself for letting him goad her into this line of reasoning, desperation propels her onward. “I need your assistance in escaping my grandfather so I don’t have to marry the man he chose for me.”

His feet remain rooted like mountains to her stone chamber floor. His helmet remains blank, unreadable. The only indication he hears her comes from his armored fists, clenching and unclenching with the rise and fall of his chest.

“What say you, Sir Kylo?”

“I can’t cross the emperor.” His abrupt denial conjures ice which fissures Rey’s veins, but she brushes off the shudder.

“You’re from Chandrila. He’s not your emperor.”

“Perhaps your mother didn’t tell you this part of the story—I’m bound to serve him.”

“To serve the Palpatine line!” Desperation drives her voice to the rafters, but it’s too late for Rey to pull back. Fail today and she’ll be married to that sniveling Lord Hux tomorrow. “I bleed Palpatine blood and I command you to help me escape the emperor to stop the wedding.”

He waits, inscrutable behind his armor, which gleams dully in the afternoon sunlight streaming through the chamber windows. Rey worries that the sun will set before he responds. She gulps back her rising desperation and stares at his visor, imagining angry blue eyes the color of her grandfather’s magic lightning.

“If I do this, my debt is paid.” His voice is harsher somehow, insistent and metallic.

Rey nods, although the idea of giving up what little power she possesses turns her stomach. “I swear by the old gods and the new.”

“So it will be.” When he extends his hand, she stares at it in confusion, but it doesn’t waver. So she grips it, letting the cold metal gauntlet meet her bare palm, sealing her fate in defiance of her grandfather’s legacy. From their hands springs a thin gold rope, insubstantial and glittering as it threads between their fingers.

Rey has seen magic in her grandfather’s court—periwinkle sparkling illusions that charm courtiers and deadly indigo smoke that snuffs out life. She’s never been close enough to feel its cool burn against her palm, never seen it blossom such a bright shade of sunshine. It should scare her after all she’s seen magic do, but it calls to a long-forgotten part of her soul. Then as fast as it appears, it dissolves between their fingers, leaving Rey gaping like a flukefish.

Maz’s words echo through her head: “In order for the Force to give, it must take in equal measure.” Although Rey feels the same after touching the thin gold thread, she wonders at its invisible cost.

Kylo shrugs it off as though it were nothing, unclasping his cloak and throwing it at Rey. It falls to the floor as she remains stunned by the brief display that united them. “Tonight. After dinner.”

When she shivers at his declaration, he mistakes its source. “Pack warm.” Under his helm, he must be smiling because a note of amusement creeps into his stern facade. “It’s cold out there for a princess.”

* * *

At dinner, Rey can’t concentrate on her betrothed, nor the retinue of soldiers, wearing his white and red sigil, who line the walls of the banquet hall. Lord Hux sits by her side, prattling about the journey, his swordplay, his delight at allying their families. His chatter fades away as Rey schools her face into a perfectly passive expression, a small smile on her lips that doesn’t light her eyes.

Maz notices her stoicism when she bustles over to Rey under the pretense of bringing more spiced honey cakes. “Sweet like my dear child,” she says, patting her ward’s cheek. Rey catches her in a cinnamon-scented hug, no matter who might be watching, and whispers something like goodbye in her nursemaid’s ear.

Her grandfather notices her stoicism, too, his plum emperor’s robes highlighting his gaunt cheeks. He nods, raising his glass at Rey as she pretends to listen to Hux. _This is the way,_ her grandfather seems to say in the rattle of his cough that he drowns in wine. Rey returns his acknowledgement with a nod of her own and waits for the revelers to disperse before creeping back to her chamber and waiting to embark on a new way.

* * *

Kylo Ren smuggles her out of the keep easily enough under the cloak of night. True to his word, they encounter no resistance as they mount twin black mares and gallop out of the gates. The gatekeeper buys Ren’s lie that he and his squire have been called back to Jakku on urgent business. Rey keeps her head down and her hood on, nodding deferentially when the gatekeeper commiserates about having to miss the upcoming wedding feast. “‘Twill be quite the celebration,” he says. “Emperor Palpatine won’t spare any expense for his granddaughter. A pity you have to miss it.”

“A pity indeed,” Rey mutters before Sir Kylo can stop her, earning his scowl and an inquisitive glance from the gatekeeper. But they pass freely and Sir Kylo waits until they’ve put half a dozen dusty miles between them and the Imperial Palace before wheeling on her.

“You risked our cover.”

“I didn’t give us away.”

“Too soon to know that.” The grim certainty in his words, coupled with the thick fog rolling over the Coruscant countryside, sends tremors down Rey’s spine, but she refuses to let him see her flinch. So she steels herself in the saddle, spurring her mount onward without waiting to see if he’s keeping pace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Your prompt's freedom allowed me to play around with this curse concept—thank you for the inspiration! Hope that you enjoy the story and that you have a lovely Valentine's Day. I'll post a chapter a day until the author reveal. Chapter Two involves some pining and angst, per your tags request. :)


	2. The Inn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Rey and her cursed knight, Kylo Ren, discover there's only one available bed at a roadside inn, they make do with what they're offered.

They ride until a faint dawn threatens to yank back night’s cloak and reveal their presence to any nearby party traveling along the flat emperor’s road. “We stop here,” Sir Kylo announces as they approach a ramshackle inn, its thatched roof patchy around the eaves. Small though it may be, it’s stuffed to the seams with travelers, commoners and noblemen alike, on their way to the princess’s wedding.

“That’s all we’ve got, what with the princess’s wedding tomorrow,” the innkeeper says when Sir Kylo demands two rooms and she points him to one last empty chamber in the building. “Though I’m sure a knight like yourself knows that. You heading to the palace?”

“Something like that,” he grumbles. Rey fidgets beside him, his wool cloak itching fiercely against her neck. Only once she moves does the innkeeper notice her and frown before turning back to Sir Kylo and pasting on a coy smile.

“If your… companion finds the arrangements unsatisfactory, I could be persuaded to make room for you in my bed, Sir.” Her giggle clings to Rey like the sweat matting her hair to her forehead, unwelcome and sticky. These blatant attempts at flirtation almost make Rey giggle, too, as she imagines Sir Kylo’s grimace behind his mask.

But his answer wipes any trace of humor from her lips. “My lady wife is tired,” he snarls. “Take us to the empty room.”

The woman shoots Rey a scathing glare before executing a shallow bow that’s more insult than deference. “Right away, milord.”

When the chamber door on the second floor swings open, Rey understands why Sir Kylo protested the offer: although a fire roars in one corner and a copper washtub steams in another, one bed occupies the middle of the room. Brown furs lay folded across it, tempting Rey to curl her aching legs under their weight and drift off to sleep. Then the chamber door swings shut, and it’s just her and Sir Kylo. All thoughts of sleep flee her mind as her body coils in preparation for another fight.

“I’m not your lady wife.”

“An alibi. To protect your honor. I didn’t want this,” he says, a hint of apology leaking through his helm as he gestures at their close quarters, at the single bed. Once again, Rey’s left stunned by her companion’s strange ways. Based on the legends, she half-expected him to march her to bed and crawl in beside her, demanding her body as payment for his services. Yet here he stands, hugging the wall in his attempts to put distance between them.

Not to be outmatched, she folds her arms. “Neither did I.”

“But here we are.” Dark and deep, his voice prompts another shiver from Rey. This time she can’t hide it by running away. He takes note of it, cocking his head behind that black helmet. Rey can’t help but wonder if he ever takes off.

Steam drifts up from the bath, hot and inviting. Rey wipes the longing from her face as soon as it sparks, but this kriffing man catches it and turns his back to her. “Bathe,” he commands and though every muscle in Rey’s body urges her to comply, she bristles at his nerve.

“Not with you looming in here.”

His metal gauntlets scrape across the door handle. “Or don’t bathe. Force knows I need a drink either way.” The door rattles in its frame after he slams it. Rey waits a minute, then two, to make sure he’s really gone. When he doesn’t return, she allows herself to strip off the itchy woolen cloak, her sodden bodice and damp petticoats, her stockings and shoes, until she’s submerged deep in a tub a tad too cold for her liking.

But that’s her fault, a little voice reminds her, for waiting long enough for the steaming water to cool. Her fault for waiting so long to escape her family. Her fault for wanting to escape her family at all. She soaks until her skin prunes, bony knees pressed against her chin and elbows too gawky to fit in the tub. A length of rough linen serves as her towel, but does little to block out the cold.

From her hastily packed rucksack, she pulls plain skirts and embroidered blouses. They smell of cinnamon and apricots, like Maz’s stories at the end of a long day. She settles for a simple cotton shift when the smell of home leaves her feeling hollower than she has in the weeks leading up to the wedding. What will Maz say when she wakes up tomorrow and finds an empty bed? Will she run weeping to Rey’s father, or face the emperor’s wrath? Will Rey’s mother cry? Without a wedding on the horizon, would they even notice her absence? The thought sickens Rey as she plaits her wet hair like Maz taught her.

When Sir Kylo Ren returns from the dining hall, smelling of sweat but no wine and bearing two heaping bowls of stew, Rey wonders if he excused himself for her own comfort so she could bathe alone, a courtesy that strikes her as tender after so many years of existing as an afterthought. Her growling stomach forces her to accept the stew without much fuss. They eat in companionable silence on opposite ends of the bed, perched on the edges like falcons ready to take flight. He removes his helmet without ceremony, shaking loose his thick black hair and refusing to look away when she meets his eyes. They’re brown, not lightning-blue, warm where she pictured frost. She wonders why a man so harsh has eyes so gentle. She wonders if he notices how long she’s staring.

She should wrap herself in a blanket, hide her body in something thicker than a shift, but Rey can’t bring herself to care about modesty while her former life, wretched though it was, burns to embers with the rest of the fire. It banks low in the fireplace and the foggy chill from outside seeps through the thatched roof, clinging to her wet hair.

“You’re cold,” Sir Kylo says, letting his empty bowl and spoon clatter to the stone floor. He stands, but makes no move to approach her.

“So are you.” No shivers wrack his body, but she can’t imagine his armor does much to keep out the cold without his cloak, still heaped by the copper tub.

One swift tug, and he pulls a stack of furs to the floor. “I’ll manage.” When the furs take on a vague nest-like shape, his intent becomes clear.

“You shouldn’t,” Rey protests, although she abhors the alternative.

He continues arranging the furs, then removes each piece of his armor one by one, placing them in an orderly pile next to the blankets. “The floor will do.” His eyes soften infinitesimally once he glances in her direction as if her well-meaning distress amuses him. “I’ve slept on worse.”

Although he means to reassure her, he only stirs her pity. “Then you take the mattress. I’ll sleep on the floor.”

True to form, he remains unmoved by her offer. “The floor for me, milady.” His reply almost sounds friendly, or at least that’s what Rey chastises herself for thinking. This man—this creature—is not her friend, but a cursed remnant of a broken promise with a debt to pay before he can seek freedom far away from the Palpatine legacy that ruins everything it touches.

“Please,” she argues, but he grows stony again at her plea. It irritates her, how she must beg. “Surely you don’t want to sleep on the floor.” When he shrugs, she can’t help herself; the jape falls from her lips fully formed: “Perhaps the innkeeper still has room between her sheets.”

“I don’t want her sheets,” he growls, and Rey hates the way her pulse leaps at his declaration, or maybe at his darkening eyes. He glowers in her direction until she crawls under her own pile of furs atop the mattress and yawns despite her best efforts. Only then does he turn his back on her, stripped down to his leather gloves and a simple black tunic that clings to his broad shoulders in the dwindling firelight. Rey hates herself for looking, but can’t look away. She drifts to sleep, the image of a knight in black burned into her brain.

Her dreams are blue and red shimmers melting snow, and a faceless monster lurking in the trees. She wakes, a cry on her lips and Sir Kylo’s gloved hand shaking her shoulder. She blinks and he lets go, a faint lingering warmth the only indication that he touched her.

“You were screaming,” he says almost defensively when she stares at him a beat too long. “Draws attention.”

“Oh,” she says because she’s too afraid to ask what he heard in her shrieks. He straightens, but makes no move to return to his makeshift bed.

“What did they do to you in that palace?” Even without his helmet, his voice is flat, disinterested if Rey didn’t know better. But after spending the better part of a day with him, she detects a hint of pity in the question and bristles at it.

“Nothing that would surprise you, Sir.” His title turns to ash on her tongue. His jaw tightens at her sneer; still he does not move. “Your grandfather served mine. Surely you know what he’s capable of.”

“But with family—”

“With family, he doesn’t have to hide his true face.” His pity unnerves her more than his temper, so she scrabbles for safer territory while fighting back a yawn. “Don’t let me disturb your sleep. That is, if you think it wise we still sleep.”

Without windows, there’s no sky by which to tell time, but a groggy exhaustion pins Rey to the mattress. The same heaviness emanates from Sir Kylo as he sinks back to the floor. They can’t ride until dark anyway.

“Kylo,” she whispers before the impulse can desert her. He jerks back into view. “Please.” Something about facing her nightmares alone, no Maz to comfort her when she wakes screaming, leaves her clammy. The darkness conceals his hesitation and her terror, allowing them to swallow their fears and meet on a lumpy straw mattress.

When he slips under the covers, laying his long body ramrod straight and parallel to hers, Rey worries that breathing too hard might jolt them from this tenuous peace. So she lays stiff and silent, curling into him only when she begins to drift to sleep, too tired to register his gloved hands that wend around her back.

* * *

They wake again to a clatter of swords and shouts, this time sounds not confined to Rey’s dreams. As she jerks awake to find her limbs tangled with Kylo Ren’s, she freezes. He nuzzles into her when she attempts to pull away, but jerks away when she shakes his shoulder. “They’re here,” she says, making no attempt to disguise her fear. She’s heard the same lockstep march outside the Imperial Palace. “My grandfather sent the Order of the Storm after us.”

He swears, stumbling out of the furs and into his armor, each piece sliding onto his body at an agonizing pace. Rey picks up a bracer, trying to speed up the process, but he barks at her to gather their supplies instead. By the time he’s suited up, she’s stuffed her clothes, along with a few extra furs and the bread from last night’s stew, into the rucksack and wrapped herself in his cloak.

As the soldiers’ clanking nears, they dash down the rickety stairs and past the lodgers dining on a late lunch. Along the far wall, the innkeeper converses with three officers wearing the Empire’s black and white sigil. Her coy smile suggests a familiarity with the men that sets Rey’s stomach churning.

At the stable, their horses sense distress and allow themselves to be bridled with little fuss. They spirit Sir Kylo and Rey from the stables to the road, sweat already lathering their withers.

“Riders!” barks a soldier stationed outside, but he disappears along with the inn into the dust. Coruscant’s golden hills dissolve into a steady thump of hooves pounding the emperor’s road and blood pounding through Rey’s ears. They ride until all remnants of sleep are shaken from Rey’s head, until her neatly combed hair tangles in the wind and her heartbeat steadies with every yard they put between them and the laughing innkeeper.

“She called them there, I’m sure of it,” Rey insists when they pull off the road to water their horses at the first sounds of a babbling creek. The horses lap at the water, and she does, too, once she realizes Sir Kylo’s not going to respond. He doesn’t refute her suspicion, just stands there watching their mares drink, his jaw working over a question or maybe a reprimand that never passes his lips.

“They’re still on our tail,” he finally says once the horses have drunk their fill. Despite his full suit of armor, he swings back into the saddle with a sturdy grace that Rey can’t quite imitate. “We keep riding.”

And ride they do, the creek trailing away and the road turning to mud the farther their horses walk from the Imperial City. Rey hasn’t traveled this far from home, not even when she joined her grandfather on his annual progress to the neighboring city of Metellos. The familiar golden hills give way to pine forests with spiky branches and molting needles. Kylo doesn’t blink at the transition. Rey wants to ask where he’s from, why he really came to the Seven Sectors, but he doesn’t slow their punishing pace and for that she’s grateful. Maybe they’ll outstrip the Order of the Storm. Maybe she’ll finally taste freedom.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up tomorrow: Kylo tries to claim that he's fulfilled his end of the bargain, but Rey won't have it. :)


	3. The Crossroads

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> As Kylo Ren and Rey continue fleeing the emperor's grasp, they grow closer both emotionally and physically.

Under the foreign pine trees, as afternoon wanes into evening, the trail splinters in two. Sir Kylo pulls up short at the fork, his mare whinnying at the sudden stop. “The city of Kor Vella is a mile that way.” He jerks a thumb to the right. “You asked me to help you escape. I fulfilled our bargain.”

A twig snaps in the distance; Rey’s mare stamps uneasily. “That was not our bargain.”

“I smuggled you out of the palace.” His dismissive shrug sends Rey’s head spinning.

At a kick from Sir Kylo’s heels, his horse starts plodding down the left path. Dumbfounded, Rey watches his progress before nudging her own horse into a trot. She pulls up alongside the knight, cutting off his horse with her own. Both horse and rider snort in annoyance.

“Step aside,” he commands.

“But this isn’t far enough!” Rey scrabbles for the right words to bind him to her side. “The soldiers at the tavern were just the beginning. Grandfather will send more of them, I’m sure of it. Troops to check all Seven Sectors. I haven’t escaped. Not yet.”

Sir Kylo tilts his head and once again Rey wishes she could rip off his black helmet to see his reaction. He remains stiff, unyielding, but he doesn’t argue further as their wrists begin to flicker golden, an otherworldly reminder of their bond. Rey clings to the light, but it fades as soon as Sir Kylo nods.

As the sun sinks behind the thickening trees, they continue to ride until they reach a clearing several paces from the road. “We camp here,” Sir Kylo grunts after knotting his horse’s reins around a nearby tree and stalking off into the forest in search of firewood.

* * *

After spending a few hours riding through the forest, Rey still can’t stop staring up at the trees fading into the twilight. When she twists back to the roaring fire, she catches Sir Kylo staring not at the trees, but at her. “I’ve never seen so much green,” she explains.

At her admission, his head tilts. “You’re unfamiliar with Corellia. You toss and turn sleeping on straw. Your stomach growls after just one serving.”

As if on cue, Rey’s stomach grumbles, never mind the small hunk of bread she’s been gnawing on since they dismounted for the evening.

“You know nothing of life outside the palace, yet you’re running away. Why?” His straightforward curiosity without judgment or contempt sets Sir Kylo Ren lightyears apart from the royal family. For that, Rey is grateful.

“I told you at the palace, they’re marrying me off to Lord Hux. I won’t go through with it.”

The flames dancing between them do nothing to conceal his sidelong glance. “An expectation from birth for a princess like you.”

“But not like this. Not to him.”

The knight’s bitter laugh echoes her disgust. “A self-serving bastard with the brains of a pigeon.”

After watching her fiancé laugh at his soldier’s murder, Rey takes special pleasure in Kylo’s description. “Sir, no need to insult the pigeons.”

The chuckle her comment wrings from him sets her heart aflight. For the first time in weeks, she laughs hard enough to banish her worries—the aches from the road, the fear of their pursuers, the mystery of her companion. For the first time in weeks, she’s just Rey without any title or surname to weigh her down.

“Where will you go?” he asks as she pitches the remainder of her bread from hand to hand. He watches her progress, his own bread wolfed down long ago.

“When I was trapped in the palace, I only thought of escape. I didn’t plan after that. But I’m beginning to realize nowhere is safe.”

“Ride north to Hoth. He won’t track you there.”

Envisioning the northernmost sector’s grey skies, icy plains, and cold durasteel fortresses eases the pressure weighing on her chest. Rey loses herself in fantasies of falling snow before remembering her grandfather’s fleet and his iron will to claim what he deems rightfully his. Including her.

“You don’t understand.” Her bread sticks going down as skepticism blooms across his face. “He’ll never stop hunting. Not until he’s dead, or I’m dead, or both of us.”

“You’re his family,” Sir Kylo points out. “He wouldn’t let you die.”

He doesn’t understand; no one ever really does, except for Maz. The urge to hurl the heel of her bread at his chest peaks and passes. She settles for snapping, “What do you know?”

“I know enough. I know that he lied to my grandfather. Turned him into a slave. Tricked him with an oath.”

“Your grandfather broke his oath.” But Rey knows how the emperor operates, how he once killed a man in open view of the court for failing to bring him the Lord of Bespin’s head, how he hides the blue sparks until it’s too late to run.

Sir Kylo’s face shutters when she says that, and she realizes she’s pushed too far. He stalks from his fireside perch into the surrounding woods, gone before Rey can muster up an apology. Feeding the fire twig after twig occupies her until he returns, his footfalls quiet and steady. She doesn’t sense his arrival until he’s looming overhead.

“Why are you running away?” he asks again, colder this time.

“The emperor named me his heir.”

She doesn’t miss his sudden swallow, nor his eyebrows drawing together. “Your parents. Did they agree to this?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does!” His fisted hands match his tightly wound tone. “Why you?”

Were she not sick at the memories threatening to sweep her away, she might question his sudden insistency. As she closes her eyes, it all disappears—Sir Kylo, the forest—and she’s transported back to the emperor’s study with its wine-dark carpet and her grandfather’s calculating sneer.

“Kaida is weak,” Emperor Palpatine had scoffed, an attempt to stifle a cough. “Her pitiful excuse for a husband even weaker. But you.” His ice blue eyes began to gleam, troubling Rey then and troubling her again now. “You are the only one strong enough to carry on my legacy. To uphold our family’s reign…” A coughing fit, stronger than the first, overtook him and he doubled over, fighting his failing lungs for air.

Rey reached out to steady him. He waved her away, gesturing at himself once the cough ebbed. “I need a true empress to take my place. My daughter is no empress, but you, Rey, will do what your mother cannot. You will take my place and lead Coruscant into another hundred years of the Palpatine dynasty.”

A brush against Rey’s back jolts her back from the dark paneled study to the moonlit forest. Sir Kylo jerks his hand away as if burned, but keeps his concerned eyes locked on hers as she heaves for breath and takes stock of their surroundings.

“My parents were too weak. He said there were wolves waiting to swallow Coruscant whole. Scavengers to pick at the remains of our empire should I fail.” Her shoulders slump as she glances at their makeshift camp: the sputtering fire, the tied-up horses, the pile of furs.

“You didn’t fail.” There it is, that same insistence from the inn, warmer now, but more determined. Rey basks in it, although who is this knight to decide whether she destroyed her family and empire? “Becoming like him, that’s failing.”

They don’t say much after that, letting the darkness swallow the fire and curling up in their makeshift bedrolls on opposite sides of the embers. When Rey startles from a dream, whimpering pleas to invisible ghosts, Kylo has already dashed to her side, one hand gripping his sword hilt. Poised to defend her before he knows what she’s fighting.

The next morning, Rey will blame it on the cold or the dark or the palace’s specter still dominating her mind. But that doesn’t stop her from tugging at his tunic and whispering his name, soft and dry like the rustle of leaves underfoot when Kylo drags his bedroll over to hers and curls up at her side. He stays there for the rest of the night, his ungloved hands warm against her stomach.

* * *

A cracking sound yanks Rey from another dream of the ocean; she bolts upright to find Sir Kylo sheepishly flourishing his unsheathed sword and a nearby tree teetering by its roots.

“A branch fell,” he says, the cleanly sliced tree branch at his feet filling in the gaps in his explanation.

“I see.” Rey eyes his sword until he lowers it with a sigh.

“You can’t do better.”

She should be used to his dismissive nature by now, but this particular comment conjures a specter of her grandfather scowling from his tower above the sword yard the day before he commanded the Order of the Storm to stop indulging her and return to their own training. Dreams forgotten, Rey leaps from the furs, into her boots, and at his throat. He passes her his sword, amusement or a challenge flickering across his face.

“Show me what you know.”

The steel is heavy, bigger than her training blade from years ago and clumsy in her hands. But her brief training comes back to her as she raises the blade above her head and swings for Sir Kylo’s chest. Later she’ll claim she was swinging for the tree, but at that moment, Rey longs for a proper fight. He dodges out of the way fast enough, then strides to his pack at the fire’s edge and retrieves another, simpler sword without blade carvings or a finely wrought star at the hilt.

He trades her the simpler blade; she relishes the lighter weight of the new weapon in her hand. When she swings again, he counters with a lazy parry. “Most princesses haven’t touched a sword before,” he says before launching an offensive strike of his own. Steel on steel rings out across the clearing as her blade kisses his. “But not you.”

“Not me,” she agrees. Meeting each swipe of his blade with hers demands all of her energy, but slowly, surely she drives him back. Just an inch, to be sure, but an inch that her trembling muscles and glistening skin bear testament to. She notes the way his conversation trails off as he pushes harder against her sword. Once he pins her against a tree trunk, bark scraping her back and a blade at her throat, she wonders if this is still a game.

His free arm coils lazily around her, locking her in place, but it feels different than Lord Hux’s unwelcome touch. She knows Kylo will release her before she even wants to ask. Somehow he intuits her needs in any given moment. She doesn’t remember Maz’s legends mentioning the curse forging such bonds, nor generating the kind of heat that her body does when his hovers only a breath away. It compels her in ways that she’s not used to, so she drops her sword to the forest floor.

“Your grandfather didn’t train you,” he deduces once she yields. Pine needles muffle its fall. Kylo lowers his blade after her hands come up empty.

Her bitter laugh startles a gulginaw from its perch. “He forbade me from learning.”

“But you learned anyway.” She gulps up his begrudging respect, thirsting for more and loathing herself all the while.

“Only what I could before he intervened.” Her sweat-slicked palms soak through her thin linen chemise. In the weak morning light in a forest far from home, Rey can hear Maz’s lecture about propriety and the need for chaperones. Princesses should never stay alone with scoundrels, or any man for that matter, for too long. But on the run, there are no chaperones, and in a fight, there are no corsets. All thoughts of her nursemaid flee as she catches Kylo staring at her, his inscrutable look reddening her cheeks faster than the crisp winter air. He doesn’t look away.

“You have good instincts,” he says. “Trust them. But you twist up your grip when you swing at my knees. Like this.” He demonstrates the proper hold, waits for her to pick up her blade, and watches her practice the motion until she gets it right. Then he pushes her into a new stance, a new rhythm that nudges her off-balance until it becomes second nature.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next up: Rey attempts to put her sword skills to the test and we get a sweet hurt/comfort scene. :)


	4. The Confrontation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When the Order of the Storm corners Rey and Kylo Ren in the woods, Rey discovers that she's more similar to her grandfather than she's willing to admit.

Sore but satisfied after sparring, Rey rubs her neck as she squats by the banked fire. Every sinew blazes under her fingers, but it’s the good kind of heat that accompanies growth. A different heat than the one taking root in her stomach, beating against her chest when she passes Kylo back his sword and their fingertips brush.

The weak winter sun has crawled higher in the sky. Once the weapons are stowed, Kylo’s impatient to resume riding. Their camp packed and horses watered, there’s nothing left for Rey to do but snuff out the fire and wait for Kylo to return from washing up in the woods. Blisters have formed on her hands where she clutched the sword too tight; they ache at the thought of clinging to reins. But Rey understands the need for haste. Out here in Corellia, only one sector north of Coruscant, they still haven’t escaped from her grandfather’s reach.

A branch cracks. A horse whinnies. Hoofbeats pound toward the campsite—too many for it to be Kylo, Rey thinks as she lunges for his sword, and didn’t he go on foot anyway? She’s scrabbling through his saddlebags when the Order of the Storm stampedes into view. Five knights, with Captain Phasma leading the way in her gleaming armor, a gift from the emperor.

“There you are,” she says, swinging down from her mount and advancing on Rey. Her greatsword remains belted at her waist, but her fingers itch eagerly in sharp contrast to her warm words. “Your family’s worried sick for your safety. How glad the emperor will be to learn that I rescued his heir from the clutches of a renegade knight.”

“I wasn’t kidnapped,” Rey retorts. Phasma dismisses her with a shake of her silver-plated helm.

“Kylo Ren is a traitor. Alderaanian scum.” Another step forward and she pins Rey against a broad tree trunk. Her knights look on from horseback, waiting to swoop at one false move. “Once he dies like his filthy grandfather, you’ll understand how he’s using you to get revenge on the emperor.”

Under the shining silver armor is a blond woman almost Rey’s mother’s age, a woman who forbade her knights to engage Rey in swordplay, a woman who strategized brutal punishment for the Nabooian uprisers, a woman who slaughtered thousands in the emperor’s name. This woman is a weapon, honed by battle and years of service to the throne. Caught in her crosshairs, Rey has nowhere to run and Kylo’s nowhere in sight. Still she refuses to go down without a fight, so she launches her full weight into Phasma. The captain stumbles, but rights herself fast enough to wrap a steel-plated gauntlet around the princess’s wrist. “You may be the heir to Coruscant, but you’re no empress yet.” Her hiss promises pain if Rey continues to resist.

“Threatening your future empress.” Kylo’s even voice rings out low and loud across the clearing. “And you call me the traitor.” He stalks from the treeline toward the intruders, sword drawn and teeth bared. His sword glows gold as Phasma nears. As it lights up, Rey’s wrists tingle, a phantom reminder of the gold-thread promise that she and Kylo made in the Imperial Palace.

Phasma grunts in reply, abandoning Rey to face the challenger. After years employed in Palpatine’s service, she doesn’t startle at the magic, facing down Sir Kylo without hesitation.

It happens so suddenly that Rey hesitates to blink: Phasma swipes at Kylo, who blocks her assault with a flurry of white-gold shimmers. The knights spur their horses to action, crossing the campsite and bearing down upon the fight. Spinning out of Phasma’s reach, Kylo aims his glowing sword for the nearest rider, ramming it through his leg. The rider collapses in the seat and his horse, eyes white and mouth foaming, thunders past the battle. Its hoofbeats echo throughout the clearing in time with Kylo’s sword, _clop chop clop chop clop chop_.

Kylo fells the fleeing horse with one blow to its knees; it topples to the ground, pinning its rider underneath. He doesn’t pause, just parries another assailant’s attack with the upswing. His brutal efficiency nauseates and fascinates Rey in equal measures. Although his assailant manages to drive a spear through his leg, she loses her life on Kylo’s sword before he can yank her spear out.

The next knight is dispatched before Rey can dash to the saddlebags and draw the second sword. As his last breaths rattle across the clearing, Rey hefts the blade and springs into action before she can worry whether a few hours training with Kylo will be enough to protect her. Right now she can’t let him face the ambush on his own. Not when it’s her they’re after. So she leaps at the nearest rider, startling his horse into bucking him off. He tumbles to the dirt and Rey leaps after him.

As her sword splits flesh down to the bone, she hates how easy it is, the choice she makes to kill. It’s either that or be killed, any true semblance of choice destroyed when her grandfather sent his hunters after her. She’s never felt closer to him than she does in the moment when her blade strikes true.

Then she stumbles backward, choking for air as her necklace becomes a garrote in the hand of another bellowing knight. “You’ll pay for that, Princess,” he sneers, dragging her from his fallen comrade. The sword slips from her grasp as she digs her sweating fingers between her neck and the chain, failing to escape as he reels her close enough to feel his hot breath hit her cheeks. It smells of fish and promises pain. No matter how Rey wiggles, he keeps her trapped.

“Old granddad said we had to bring you back alive. Didn’t say we couldn’t have our fun first.” His leer morphs into hatred as he eases up on the necklace and Rey gulps for air. Her pulse thumps, thumps, thumps in her ears, in her throat, and the horse hooves _clop chop clop chop_ , and Rey wonders if Lord Hux’s soldier felt this desperate as her grandfather stole the last of his breath.

Her captor drags a dagger from his belt, slides its cool blunt edge across Rey’s cheek. She strains against it. Futile, she realizes, as her pulse quickens. The thump drowns out Phasma’s grunts, Kylo’s shouts, the clopping horses from across the clearing. Her world is reduced to the knife tip, which skitters across her face and disappears. Then her blouse rips, her bicep blazes, and something sticky trickles down the length of her arm.

“You sliced him open.” Her captor’s voice tightens, forcing Rey to turn her head and behold the crumpled suit of armor before them. “A cut for a cut.” Then his dagger returns to caress her face, and Rey can’t hear him anymore over her rushing pulse. Her eyes slide shut, and all Rey can think about is what would Maz say if she could see her now, mud-stained skirts and bloodstained hands.

Her fingertips heat to a white-hot glimmer. The man yelps, releasing the necklace and leaping away from her body. The signet falls back into place against her chest, the warm metal a reminder of his unwelcome hands. Rey looks down to see purple sparks in her palms flickering out of existence as fast as they materialized. She opens her mouth to scream, and then Kylo appears, driving his sword into her captor’s neck.

“You saw that!” she says, frantic for some confirmation that she hasn’t succumbed to mirages, hopeful for a denial because she won’t face the possibilities of possessing magic.

Kylo turns away, wiping his bloodied blade on his tunic. “I saw nothing.”

While the other fighters lay gutted and groaning on the ground, Phasma holds her blade steady as she strides through the campfire’s ashes. “Give up the girl,” she sneers. “And you’ll be a rich man.” From her cloak, she produces a crumpled piece of parchment that she brandishes like a weapon.

Rey doesn’t need to inch closer to make out her own name and a sketched likeness, along with a reward promising anyone throughout the Seven Sectors their weight in gold should they return the missing princess. So that’s what drove them from the inn. They’d do best to avoid settlements like that from here on out. If they make it out of this alive. Rey feels her grandfather’s indigo smoke tightening around her, biding its time until it can snuff out her last hope of escape.

“She’s nothing to you,” Phasma goads when no one else speaks. Her men have long since quieted, their bodies splayed around the clearing, broken like the twigs of the fir trees surrounding them. “Nothing but a ticket to freedom.”

Foolish woman. She should know that Sir Vader’s black armor prevents Kylo from seeking true freedom. That much the legends got right. But she advances when he crooks his head, a gleam in his eyes betraying his interest.

“How much?” he asks.

“More than you can spend in a lifetime.” Phasma’s helmet does little to mask her smugness.

Kylo shrugs, sending fear flickering through Rey’s gut. Then her wrists tingle, a reminder of their bond, and she forces herself to breathe as he counters, “You’ll kill me as soon as I hand her over.”

Phasma shakes her head, closing the gap between them. “I serve the emperor. The gold is yours. Just bring her to me.”

Rushing blood, stamping hooves, and a flash of silver. Then it’s over, and Phasma collapses to the forest floor. A bed of pine needles softens her fall. Dark red stains seep down her polished chrome breastplate. Kylo’s blade gleams gold, fueled by his vow to Rey that he upheld despite the reward.

“Princess,” Captain Phasma chokes out, a desperate final plea as her fingers find the fatal wound. “Your parents. They miss you. They cry for you every night.”

A lie if she’s ever heard one, but Rey’s breath catches at the image: two grieving parents fretting over their missing daughter. For a moment, she wishes it was true. Then Kylo’s sword stabs clean through the captain, and jaunty silver turns to gushing red.

“You’re hurt.” The first words out of his mouth once the captain sags lifelessly, and they’re only for Rey. He yanks his dulling sword from the corpse and limps to Rey’s side.

“So are you.”

He waves away her concern. “It’s nothing.” Yet veins strain across his neck and his lips blanch the longer he wavers on his feet before her.

“Sit.” Her command must surprise him, for he obeys without protest, sinking to the nearest stump.

“Leather pouch,” he calls once she returns to rifling through his saddlebags, this time for a cure. From the pouch she fishes a roll of bandages, dried willow bark, and a pungent cinnamon salve in a small wooden box.

“I haven’t done this much,” she admits. Never, really. Wounds aren’t proper for a princess to handle, her grandfather said, but Maz introduced her to the basics through stories of her nursing days back during the Great Rebellion. Although her advice rings clear in Rey’s head, it remains hypothetical, untested by Rey’s unpracticed hands. One look at Kylo’s wound, bleeding darker through his trousers by the second, reminds her while her knowledge may be hypothetical, his wound is not.

So she springs into action, passing him willow bark to chew for the pain and pacing from tree to tree in search of supplies: moss and cobwebs to staunch the bleeding. She packs the wound with delicate spider silk once the moss soaks up the initial flow, winds a clean linen bandage around the injury and secures it with a clumsy knot. Maz would be proud, Rey hopes, as she rolls down Kylo’s breeches to cover the bandage.

Their mission accomplished, her crimson-stained fingers wander to her stinging bicep, to the torn blouse and trickling blood. Kylo’s soft eyes follow their journey; instead of resting his injured leg, he drags himself upright and stands over Rey, taking stock of her injury.

“A scratch.” Her dismissal is met with equal concern. He cleans the site with a splash from his wineskin. He smooths that bitter cinnamon salve into the cut, holding Rey’s arm tight when she flinches. He winds another fresh linen bandage thrice around her arm before tying it off.

“Tighter,” she grunts when he hesitates. “I can take it.”

“I know you can.” He tugs the bandage tighter, wincing as she winces. He bears witness to her pain, just as she did for him, and Rey wonders if there’s a more intimate act that two strangers could share.

When Kylo reaches for her, abandoning any pretense of checking for wounds, she folds into his embrace. They stand like that for a while, listening to the chirping gulginaws and the thump of each other’s hearts.

* * *

“Your parents,” he begins when Rey insists on changing his bandages the next evening. The dry pine forests have been replaced by a humid jungle that leaves Rey’s chemise plastered to her skin. Kylo peels off his armor and tunic as soon as they make camp for the night, leaving Rey with nowhere safe to look and the kind of improper thoughts that would make Maz cackle. Once he brings up her family, however, those improper thoughts wither.

She cuts him off before he can continue. “They’re dead to me.”

“The captain said—”

“They’ve never cared. Not really.” Winding up the dirtied bandage and unwinding a fresh one excuses Rey from meeting Kylo’s eyes, although it does little to prevent his gaze from burning into her soul.

“So she lied.”

Rey fights the urge to hurl the clean bandage at his bare chest, tell him to wrap his wound all by his kriffing self. But she keeps wrapping his leg a little harsher than necessary. “She works for my grandfather, of course she lied!”

“He’ll do anything to get you back,” he says, an echo of their argument after they escaped the inn. She knows it, and has always known it before the Order of the Storm tracked them to Corellia. Right now, she can’t bear to dwell on it any longer, so she turns the questions on him.

“She called you Alderaanian scum.”

He shrugs, but only after his fists clench. Now Rey looks up to study his face, but it gives little away. So she continues, measured and light to disguise her curiosity. “I thought you said you’re from Chandrila.”

“Chandrila’s a big country.”

“But Alderaan is…” Smoldering rubble, the remains of a thriving metropolis wiped out in one of Palpatine’s fits of fury as Coruscant warred with the Chandrilan kingdom across the sea.

“Burned. Your grandfather’s doing.” He tenses again, but lets her continue treating his wound. “He told his knights to raze the town as punishment for Sir Vader disobeying an order in battle.”

“But why Alderaan?” Rey doesn’t know the story, not like this, so she remains seated by his side after securing the bandage.

“Vader’s daughter lived there. My mother. After Lady Amidala died in childbirth, Vader hid his children. Palpatine found them anyway. My mother’s village burned and her father was powerless to save her because he swore an oath to serve Palpatine until the end of his days.” Equal parts rage and grief, his voice remains steady, but his shoulders rise to meet his ears. Rey watches him hunch in on himself, keenly aware of the snarled gold thread shimmering at the fringes of her consciousness, certain he can feel the same. A lifeline for Rey, a curse for Sir Kylo.

“The emperor is a monster,” he rasps, rage cannibalizing his grief. “And he made monsters of me and my family.”

As she bears witness to his pain, pain inflicted by her bloodline, she wishes they had met in another life, two people brought together by choice, not destiny. Perhaps then she could acknowledge the stars in his warm brown eyes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hold onto your horses because Chapter Five brings an offer from Kylo Ren that Rey can't refuse! :)


	5. The Exchange

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rey chooses to trust again as Kylo opens his magic and his heart up to her. But the cost proves too great.

Over the next week, they fall into a routine: riding their mares to the brink of exhaustion, sharing shards of their pasts, and falling asleep in furtive embraces. As they veer east, Ajan Kloss’s damp jungles bleed into Tatooine’s dry desert sands. The sand sticks to Rey’s teeth, and she longs for Corellia’s pine forests or oceans that stretch as far as the eye can see.

At least that’s what Kylo claims when she presses him to describe his home. His eyes—always so present, so focused—drift when he talks about the fog rolling off the Silver Sea, the bustling port at the heart of Hanna City, the tintolive trees swaying across Chandrila’s plains. Something softens in him when he speaks of home. It softens something in Rey, too. At night, her dreams swirl ocean-green and promise-gold. While emperor-blue sometimes lurks around the fringes, it’s drowned out by imaginary waves.

Although water soaks into her dreams, it’s scarce in the desert. The outposts scattered across Tatooine offer little more than water and food, both of which run dangerously low by the time Rey and Kylo reach a new settlement. The sand scratches her throat, grates under his armor, and leaves them both irritable.

“We can’t keep doing this,” Rey grumbles one day as they shake out the sand from their bedrolls and strap them to their horses’ backs. “Running, sleeping, waking up to do it again.”

“We stop running and we bring down an army on our heads.” Exhaustion hollows his reply. “You’ve said it before. Palpatine will stop at nothing to see you returned to his side. We keep running.”

“You vowed to help me escape.” She rests a hand on his cheek, hot to the touch. Touching him in the daylight is new. She braces herself for him to pull away. Instead he places one of own hands atop hers. It’s always gloved unless they’re shrouded in night, curled up together. “Even you must be tired.”

He shakes his head, but his haggard eyes and pinched mouth suggest otherwise. Rey can’t stand his denial, the pressure bearing down on them, the sand cloying her mouth. So she mutters something about taking a piss and stomps away from their waiting mares. Just a few minutes’ break before she heaves herself back into that karking saddle.

The sand fights her every step of the way. Her calves strain, but she continues to push onward. The brisk pace clears her head. When she realizes she’s wandered too far, and that Kylo must be waiting impatiently, she turns and begins to run back to him. At first her legs welcome the stretch. Then a misstep sends Rey tumbling down the dune.

As she pitches forward, reaching out to brace her fall, something snaps in her wrist. The throbbing clouds her vision white. A foreign voice calls for Kylo. It can’t be her own, she doesn’t remember opening her mouth, but her throat’s raw. He comes running, sword drawn and armor clanking. She can’t open her eyes, or maybe she can’t close them, but she clings to the sounds he makes: more clanking as he kneels by her side, panting from the run, sighing when he reaches for her wrist and she whimpers at the movement.

“You’re in pain,” he says, more to distract her from her agony than anything. He prods the wound again and curses below his breath.

“I’ve done worse,” she lies. It draws the barest smile from him, which does more to distract her from the pain than his words.

“You can’t ride like this.” Although Rey wants to protest, he’s right. Shooting pangs in her wrist, she can’t fathom holding reins or letting her horse jostle her every step of their journey. She whines at the implications accompanied by another wave of pain that threatens to detonate her wrist and scatter bone shards.

“We can camp here.” Again.

Kylo dismisses the suggestion as soon as she raises it. “Not until it heals. The next wave of soldiers will catch us.”

The Palpatine seal weighs heavy around Rey’s neck, the only cold sensation in a sea of heat. It reminds Rey that they have no time to waste. “Then I’ll ride.” She grits her teeth long enough to haul herself up from Kylo’s arms before another fresh wave of pain sends her reeling.

“Don’t move,” he orders, slipping off his gauntlets and leather gloves until his bare hands reach for hers. An incantation spills from his lips in a language more song than speech. It spills from his lips, flows over their joined hands, and conjures crimson sparks that shine like the sea. At his behest, the sparks sink into Rey’s skin. Fire roils through her splintered wrist, hotter than Tatooine’s sun. A yelp escapes her although she tries tamping it down. It draws a grimace from Kylo, his face lined and forehead damp with sweat, but he continues to speak until the last of his energy permeates her wound.

Or what remains of her wound. When Kylo lifts his hand from hers, the burning sensation ebbs. Rey’s wrist is no longer swollen, her bones mended and skin unbroken. “The Force,” she breathes.

Kylo shrugs and reaches for his gloves, but blanches at the sudden movement and falls onto his haunches. Rey moves to cradle him upright, but he brushes her away. “I’m fine.”

By the way he struggles to steady himself, the Force has already exacted its price for the healing on Kylo. Guilt overshadows Rey’s relief as she watches his eyes flutter shut and his chest heave for breath. “You didn’t need to heal me,” she snaps, for anger is better than pity.

“I wanted to.” A brittle sigh escapes him.

“You should rest.” Steeling herself against anticipated protests, Rey relaxes when none come.

“For a bit,” he agrees. They sit side by side, Rey marveling at her mended wrist and Kylo watching her thinly concealed curiosity with a ghost of a smile. “Your grandfather is a powerful Force user, but this is new to you.”

“He doesn’t heal.” Kylo goes quiet after that, and Rey kicks herself for reminding him of the curse that split his family apart. “Why were you able to wield the Force in the forest, but not here?” she asks once the silence grows too cumbersome for her to carry.

“It takes more energy to heal than kill.” His words conjure in Rey’s mind a moonlit tower filled with Maz’s warning. She shivers, but basks in his steady gaze. “What else do you want to know?”

“Everything.”

He lets her ask away, explaining the power he used to heal her as best he can. A gift from his grandfather’s blood, part of the reason that Palpatine was drawn to Vader in the first place. It binds together all living creatures, drawing its power from those bonds and allowing those who study it to manipulate those bonds at will.

“I don’t know much,” he admits. “Alderaan burned before my mother could teach me all she knew.”

“And your father?”

His face shutters; his voice splinters like ice. “He knows nothing.”

After so many lonely nights in the Imperial Palace, surrounded by family but never truly seen, Rey aches at the thought of Kylo feeling the same around his father. Instinctively, she reaches for him. Her heart soars when he permits her touch.

He breaks the silence blowing in on the desert wind. “Your grandfather wields the Force. Do you?”

Ice blue lightning fills Rey’s memories. Unlike Kylo’s healing glow, it brings nothing but pain and destruction, spurring devotion and wreaking destruction by turns. Her hands coil in on themselves at the thought of producing those sparks. “No.”

“You could,” he says, so assured. Rey hates the assumption, reminds herself Kylo hardly knows her, tamps down the deep-rooted urge to discover just what her soul can conjure.

An electric current sings between their bodies, a force calling to Rey so strongly that she rips her hand from his. “Just now when you healed me, your power was red.” A simple redirect, but one that dissolves the tension nipping at her consciousness. “But I saw gold in the tower and your sword.”

He shakes his head. “Vader’s magic.”

“The bond!” she exclaims. This part she remembers from Maz’s bedtime tales.

His snort hurts, not that she’d admit it. “You mean curse.”

“My nursemaid said that before the vow, Vader had his own magic. But after sealing himself to Palpatine, he grew more powerful—”

“So this is just a child’s story for you.” He steps forward until only a sliver of sunlight separates them. Frustration sets his entire body quivering. Rey knows she’s said something wrong. Like stabbing him in the gut, her words have wounded him and he retreats to his former coldness. “Magic, promises, thrones. A game.”

“No,” she protests, but he cuts her off again, advancing until she’s forced to scramble backward to avoid contact. She can’t bear to feel the powerful current between them again.

“Do you think this is a game to me? Fighting off imperial guards, dragging you across Coruscant, listening to you weep at night over your filthy family after begging to escape them?”

His aim is accurate; the words strike her like a blow to the stomach. “Don’t pretend this is my fault,” she hisses. “Don’t you dare! You don’t give a fuck about me, my family, or my country. You’re just here to fulfil a family debt.”

“Your grandfather’s curse!”

Every fiber of her being begs her to back down, but after a week on the road, Rey’s out of practice. “You took me this far. Now leave me.”

“I can’t!” he screams, spittle flying and veins popping. Rey can’t look away, his desperation palpable. “I can’t.” His shoulders sag, but his body continues to shake. “Not until you’re free. I must fulfill my vow.”

“Then help me escape Coruscant once and for all. Then you won’t be saddled with some nobody runaway princess.” It stings to lay out her fears so casually for Kylo to witness and scorn should he choose. Yet he doesn’t turn away from this part of her.

“Rey—” The fight has seeped out of him, replaced by a plea that slices Rey’s bones, but she can’t let him see. So she tests the straps securing her rucksack to her mare and leaps into the saddle with a practiced ease she hadn’t thought possible a fortnight ago. Her healed wrist supports her weight without protest as she makes the leap, but Rey can’t hold back a sigh when her backside makes contact with the saddle. Another day on the run.

Her weariness doesn’t escape Kylo. “You’re tired of running. I am, too. It’s time to kill the past. Let our grandfathers die with their mistakes and leave us free.”

“You’d have me kill my grandfather?” Even her wildest fantasies glossed over this part, relying on old age or a plague to finish him off and guarantee Rey her freedom.

“Not alone.” He approaches her horse, his own forgotten. “With me. I’ll finish what Sir Vader started.”

She considers the proposition for longer than she should, imagining her grandfather’s wizened outrage as she drives a knife into his shriveled heart, Kylo’s approval as he critiques her swordsmanship from across the room. Then she returns to feel the tepid desert breeze kicking sand into her mouth, to her sore behind and unwashed breeches, to the knight standing before her in his grandfather’s black armor with a grudge big enough to bring the empire to its knees. Reality hits her square in the chest: she may be a poor excuse for a runaway and a poor excuse for a granddaughter, but she’s no family killer.

So she shakes her head and turns away from the disappointment shrouding Kylo’s eagerness. “No.”

“You said it yourself. He’ll never leave you alone. His knights chased us to Corellia—”

“So take me somewhere he can’t find us. Not Coruscant. Take me home.” She doesn’t mean the proposal to sound so intimate, but his ears flush red and Rey’s sure her own cheeks mirror his blush. An eclipse of sandmoths flit in and out of sight in the time it takes him to respond. But when he does with an outstretched hand, he’s never sounded surer.

“Join me across the sea. In Chandrila. The emperor won’t track you there.”

Azure skies, green seas, and a city made of silver swim into view. This time, Rey welcomes the vision, using it to fuel her resolve. Beneath her shirt, her family crest rests cool against her skin, a reminder of everything she fears becoming if she stays in Coruscant. So she yanks off the necklace, allowing the chain to slip from her fingers to the sand. A few minutes from now, the sand will swallow it along with Rey’s last name, and then she’ll just be a girl. A nobody. Someone who can make her own destiny instead of consuming herself to preserve the Palpatine legacy.

Rey has to bend in the saddle in order to take his hand, but she stretches so their fingertips meet. Once her palm rests in his, he reaches for the rest of her, pulling her from her horse to the sand until she’s the one looking up at him now, their bodies a breath apart. Rey’s newly healed body begs her to close the gap and find out what destiny she can make, but Kylo seems reluctant to move, worried he might disturb the spell.

He looks at her long and hard, as if committing this moment to memory. Then he leans in, close enough to make his intent clear, to let the princess protect her reputation, to stop before they cross a line they can’t uncross. But Rey is no longer a princess—no longer a Palpatine—just a girl whose heart beats gold for a knight with magic in his veins. So she strains to meet him, sealing their fates with a brush of their lips.

No magic threads bind them in this embrace of their own making. The freedom tastes nearly as sweet as Kylo—all pine, salt, and sunlight. In his arms, Rey allows herself to envision a life beyond the point of escape: a hut by the sea, water as far as the eye can see, a man in black waiting for her to join him on tall, white cliffs that rend waves into foam.

He pulls away first. “We should ride.”

While Rey longs to linger in this moment, she understands they must forge ahead. “How far to the Silver Sea?”

“Two days if we ride fast.” Now he won’t look away from his horse, but he presses a quick kiss to her forehead with surprising tenderness. Rey clutches at him, aware that something in their dynamic has shifted, but unable to identify it before he boosts her into the saddle. They take off, galloping away from endless dunes and their unspoken vow.

Ride fast they do, until the dunes blur into familiar jungle. “Backtracking,” Kylo explains when Rey asks what they’re doing in the Ajan Kloss sector again. “We have to move south before we can move east if we’re to find a working port.”

They make camp under broad palm leaves. As Rey kisses Kylo underneath their bedrolls, she ponders how much has changed between them in such a short time. She savors the way his fingertips spark against her bare skin and how the damp air doesn’t seem to bother her now that his warm body shields her against the elements. In his arms, Rey finds belonging that her Palpatine surname would have never permitted. As she comes down from the stars to discover golden wisps trailing between their bodies, she imagines that Maz wouldn’t fault her for finding freedom in her rescuer. Kylo presses one more sleepy kiss to Rey’s cheek before she slips into a deep sunshine sleep.

* * *

Rey wakes alone, bundled up in a bedroll that used to sleep two. Reluctant to open her eyes and disturb last night’s spell, she nuzzles into the shape at her side only to discover that there’s no one tucked underneath the bundle of furs. No steady thumping heart, no deep even breathing, only gulginaw chirps to break the silence. When she opens her eyes, a shadow looms over her and she stifles a scream.

A metallic voice, the stuff of legends, quiets her fears by calling her name. Although the helmet clips Kylo’s greeting, Rey imagines that he’s smiling underneath. After last night, she can’t wipe away her own grin.

Silhouetted by a rising sun, Kylo reaches down to stroke her hair back from her face. Where she expects smoothness from his skin, the seams of his gloves scrape her cheeks. But Kylo’s touch in the daylight is a new and welcome gift, so she leans into it.

“Soon you’ll be free,” he vows as they dismantle their makeshift camp. The hope that Rey has squashed for so many years claws its way to the surface of her countenance. He says it makes her glow.

Kylo makes good on his vow, pushing their horses harder than he has all week. Palm fronds and humidity morph into pine needles and fog as they retrace their route from Ajan Kloss through Corellia. Backtracking, as Rey discovers, seems to take longer than expected, but she doesn’t complain. Saddlesore though she may be, she refuses to slow their pace by making a fuss.

The horses, on the other hand, wane quicker than Rey. After a few days of galloping more often than usual, they slow to a trudge and refuse to let Kylo coax them to faster speeds. Even the red sparks that slip from his hands into the horses’ ebony manes do little to re-energize them. Agitation blossoms in Kylo’s pinched shoulders and terse replies when Rey reassures him that she doesn’t mind the reduced pace. “There’s a stable in a few miles,” he says. “We’ll exchange them there.”

The thought of approaching other people after avoiding them for so long sticks in Rey’s mouth, but she follows him until they approach a squat, thatched roof stable. Rey’s spine prickles as they ride up to the broad barn doors and Kylo exchanges hushed words with a stableboy mucking stalls. As they talk, Rey dismounts, stretching her cramped legs and aching hips with a short walk around the barn.

Outside, a mild breeze toys with the hem of her skirt. Horses whinny and chickens cluck. Smoke curls beyond the stable roof. As she wonders where it’s coming from, her stomach growls, imagining a hot thick stew the likes of which she hasn’t seen for weeks. Honeycakes, too, piping hot from the pan. There’s nothing much out here, where pine trees have faded into golden rolling hills, and Rey knows that she must stay cautious, avoiding anyone who could turn her in for her grandfather’s bounty. But her stomach demands that she round the stable corner in pursuit of the smoke and whatever tasty foods might be cooked under it.

What she sees, however, scatters all thoughts of food. Beyond the stable lies a thatched roof inn with patchy eaves and a bed built for two. The inn at the fringes of Coruscant, smoking merrily as if it hadn’t betrayed her the last time she stepped foot in it.

Rey has no map stowed in her saddlebags, yet years of royal geography lessons have taught her enough to know that she is too close to home and too far from the sea. At first her feet remain rooted to the dusty path, refusing to move until she blinks and confirms the truth. Kylo has led her back to her home sector. The inn’s chimney smokes, the light breeze ruffles her skirts, and Rey’s whole world collapses around her, leaving her stomach churning and her mind racing.

In the desert, Kylo healed her at the expense of his own health. In the desert, Kylo promised they would ride for the Silver Sea. Yet in the desert, Kylo also set them on the path back to a palace of horrors where an unwelcome marriage alliance waits for Rey. She wonders what altered his course. The darkest part of her heart wonders if his promise of aid had been true.

Maybe the bounty on Rey’s enticed Kylo to turn on her, or the fear of capture by the Order of the Storm. Or maybe his grandfather’s curse binds him to serve the emperor rather than his posterity. But no reason sits right with Rey as she stands rooted to the path.

A whinny from the stable sharpens her growing panic. Soon Kylo will emerge with fresh horses, ready to lead her closer to her grandfather’s grasping clutches. Rey has no choice but to run. Although there are no nearby towns in sight, she’d rather take her chances stumbling through the hills than get hauled back to the Imperial City.

She manages to sprint a few hundred feet from the inn before Kylo’s shouts reach her ears, his worry so convincing that she almost turns around. She hates the way this man who healed her with such tenderness, who calls for her with such concern, who kisses her with such abandon still has sway over her heart.

Then his shouts fade, replaced by pounding hoofbeats which gain on Rey no matter how fast she runs. On horseback, Kylo bears down upon her and flings her into his saddle, both arms pinning her between his chest and the horse’s neck. He spins the horse in the direction of the inn, the uneven thump of his heart against Rey’s back a quiet indication of his troubled head.

“Don’t you see?” he murmurs into her ear as they approach the stable and he pulls her from his new mount, leading her to a chestnut stallion. “Killing your grandfather is the only way I can truly make you free.” The helmet leeches away any warmth in his voice that lingers from their nights together, transforming the knight Rey thought she knew into a masked stranger.

Rey opens her mouth to scream. Better to take her chances with a traitorous innkeeper than a man who will get them both killed. No one has attacked the emperor and lived to tell the tale. Kylo will be slaughtered like his mother, and Rey will be forced into gowns, marriages, and crowns that rot her soul just like her grandfather’s.

She opens her mouth to scream, but Kylo flicks three fingers in her direction. Red sparks fizzle from his gloved fingertips and Rey finds herself choking on her cry. She can’t shriek when her tongue is pushed back in her throat like this, can’t ask him if he’s lost his wits, can’t tell him to untie the heir to Coruscant’s throne or she’ll have his head. She’s just a nobody, alone with a strange man whom she trusted too much, and now it seems she’ll pay for her errors.

Betrayal is a funny feeling, Rey realizes as her consciousness dims and her knees buckle. Her family has used her more times than she can count, but she always knew her place as a pawn in her grandfather’s schemes. Being deceived by Kylo, a man she trusted not to use her but to save her, shatters her hungry, thawing heart. She curses his helmet, his name, his whole kriffing family as her liberation slips away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [ dustoftheancients](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustoftheancients/pseuds/dustoftheancients), you asked for angst and I'm happy to oblige. :) Fear not, though—Rey will face off against her grandfather in the next chapter and settle some old scores. Check back tomorrow and (almost) all will be made right!
> 
> Also, I have to thank my amazing beta, [ Padawan_Writer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Padawan_Writer/pseuds/Padawan_Writer), who rescued Kylo's characterization in this scene!


	6. The Escape

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After years of torment, Rey faces her grandfather with Kylo Ren by her side.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter involves violence as Rey and Kylo Ren fight Emperor Palpatine. The emperor also uses emotional manipulation as he tries to convince Rey to side with him and kill Kylo Ren. If you want to avoid this content, please skip the section that starts with "his assault" and ends with "minutes pass.”

The same magic that healed Rey betrays her as it allows Kylo to slip her into the Imperial Palace undetected, muffling their movements and gagging her mouth. As they ride past the gatehouse, left unguarded at this time of night, she regains a groggy consciousness. Kylo helps her from her mount and steers her deeper into the compound, keeping a close grip on her arm all the while. Although he clasps her tight, Rey knows she still stands a chance if she can wriggle free and weaponize her knowledge of the palace’s winding corridors like Kylo weaponizes his magic. So she lets him lead her without protest, biding her time until she can flee through twisting tunnels which he won’t be able to navigate as fast as her.

Her plan banks on the palace feeling foreign under Kylo’s feet, but he barely pauses as the hallway splits, then splits again. At each fork, he chooses the most efficient path to reach her grandfather’s study. The closer they draw, the more Rey’s stomach churns. She can’t be caught here, not when the emperor demands her fealty, body and soul. She’s fought too far, ridden too many miles to be shackled to a hopeless future in the name of family.

When they reach the great hall, Rey breaks from Kylo’s grip, sprinting down a servant’s passage that leads to the kitchen. Footsteps ring down the hallway in distant pursuit, but she can’t slow. Not when he’s broken his promise and led her here to wither.

He gains on her—she hears him coming, her stride only covers so much ground—and he sends a lazy red spark whistling past her ear. It explodes in a roaring blaze that seals off the rest of the passage in flames and sends Rey flying.

It’s humiliating, the hot tears that spring to her eyes as she scrambles to her feet. Far more humiliating, however, is the way Kylo slows as he approaches, tracking her frantic gaze which darts between him and the fire. Before she can make another abrupt move, he closes the gap between them and dissolves her world into darkness with one flick of his hand. As she stumbles into nothingness, sturdy gloved hands catch her and press her close to his chest.

* * *

Rey wakes to the stench of rotted plums and dusty tomes in her grandfather’s study with two monsters peering over her. Sir Kylo looms over the leather chair she’s draped in, his helmet at his side. Across the desk, Emperor Palpatine thanks him for hauling the princess back to the palace.

“You’ve done well, Ben Solo.” His rasp has grown worse, but the deadly calm is still the same. “Perhaps you’ll be of more use to me than your grandfather was. I see you still wear his armor.”

Groggy and furious, Rey doesn’t know where to focus: on her grandfather’s glee, on Kylo’s clenched fists and tightening scowl, on Sir Vader’s armor, worn like a brand and carried like a curse. Then it hits her in full force, knocking her breath from her lungs.

“Ben Solo?” Rey blurts, stupid enough to open her mouth and stupider still to glance Kylo’s way as if seeking some sort of confirmation. It gets her grandfather cackling, a phlegmy chortle which ends with him hacking up enough blood to stain his plum robe’s sleeve.

“The boy didn’t tell you?” Her grandfather’s glee nauseates her, but she refuses to give him more satisfaction by letting it show. “His mother was hidden from me for a time on Chandrila, as if distance could break Vader’s vow. She married the heir to the Chandrilan throne, a playboy prince known for dabbling in spice instead of running the empire. And this little… princeling was born.”

Kylo’s scowl could light the whole kriffing room on fire, but his eyes are desperate, flickering over Rey as he watches the truth reduce her to ash. Rey can’t meet his gaze, can’t send him reassurances while betrayal picks her bones clean and grinds her hope to sand. Her grandfather sees it all and smiles.

“Prince Solo could have made a powerful ally.” Though his eyes are failing, they pick out Rey’s weakness, the full range of her confusion. “Perhaps with time, we could have brokered a marriage between you two since you loathe Lord Hux so. Just think of it, the heirs to the two biggest continents in the world, the spawn of two powerful Force users, united in marriage. Think of the power that could’ve been yours. A pity Solo turned on his vows to me, just like his grandfather.”

“My grandfather was not yours to own,” Kylo says, cold and collected like he’s demanding another bed at the inn. “Nor is Rey.” The emperor simply sneers.

In the end, Kylo’s knuckles betray him. Pallid, with taut skin and the rage of three generations powering their swing, they leap from the hilt of his sword and connect squarely with Palpatine’s jaw. The emperor stumbles back, spitting blood. It disappears into the wine-colored carpet, followed by flickers of red, raw power streaming from Kylo’s fingers that he directs at the spluttering shell of a man across the room.

His assault is short-lived. When Palpatine straightens, he fells Kylo with a squeeze of his empty hand. No sparking magic, no swords or shields. Rey watches in horror as Kylo sinks to his knees clutching his throat and screams as Palpatine draws on the Force to fling the knight’s thrashing body atop the desk.

“Sir Vader was nothing without me!” Blue lightning arcs through Kylo’s limp body. “And now you dare betray me, traitor’s blood flowing through your veins.” The lightning pierces Kylo’s skin and crimson blood oozes from the wound, a sick imitation of the life force that generates his powers. From across the room, Rey yells, but her grandfather only cackles.

“He’s weak like his mother.” The emperor directs the conversation at Rey, casually as if they were feasting on honey cakes and sparklemint instead of watching a man die sprawled across a kriin-wood desk. “Their screams are the same.”

Howling furiously, Kylo heaves himself upright, only to fall under the emperor’s hand, this time a physical blow powered by inhuman strength that cracks Kylo’s head against the desk. Once he doesn’t move, the emperor turns to Rey. She freezes under his gaze, but it’s too late. She’s halfway to Kylo’s fallen sword, arm outstretched and nowhere to run.

“If you want to kill me, my child,” Emperor Palpatine says, a sick smile taunting her, “you don’t need a sword.” His fingertips crackle the color of candle flames. “Surely you suspected.” Rey says nothing, but her grandfather distills the truth from her silence. “So you knew.”

“I don’t want it,” she cries. “The magic, the throne, any of this. Just let me go. Find someone stronger. Please, Grandfather.” It’s foolish to expect her pleas to sway him when his soul is so cankered by misused magic that it now corrupts his body. Yet Rey has nothing left to offer.

“Oh, but this is your birthright now. Your parents are weak where you are strong. Someday you will sit on the throne. As for him…” He breaks off into a coughing fit, pointing at Kylo splayed out on the desk. “He must die, like the traitors that birthed him.” While the emperor trembles as he directs another stream of lighting through Kylo’s smoking black armor, his smile never fades.

In that moment, between the sizzling and the screams, Rey discovers that she has one more bargaining chip slipped under her borrowed cloak. “Spare him!” she demands. “Spare him and I’ll take your place. I’ll marry Hux. I’ll stop running. Just let him live and I’ll be your empress.”

When her grandfather cocks his head and his sickly blue eyes light up yellow, Rey knows that she’s made a bargain with the devil. A muffled protest, maybe her name, slips from Kylo’s smoking helmet. Although he betrayed her, she can’t let him die, not after he healed her in the desert. Not after he fought off Captain Phasma and her knights to protect Rey.

So she holds out her hand like Kylo did weeks ago in her tower. “Do we have a deal?”

Emperor Palpatine grins, toothy and foul. “How could I refuse? I need you more than you know, my dear child.”

Maz’s endearment on his lips sends shivers coursing down Rey’s spine. But she envelops his hand with hers, letting his claws dig into her knuckles and his papery skin catch in her new callouses. Molten silver threads spring from every point of contact between them. They weave a net, smooth as shimmersilk, that binds their hands and destinies together. A curse of Rey’s own. He pulls away, grinning like she placed the whole world in his gnarled palms.

“The Chandrilan scum lives so long as he never attempts to harm the Palpatine line again.” He turns his back on the desk, capturing Rey’s free hand with his until they’re holding each other, a poor caricature of a family. Suppressing a shudder, Rey clings to his declaration. Kylo is safe. And she will be empress, no matter her efforts. Had she known her escape would end like this, she never would have run, never would have knelt on the cold stone floor and chanted for a Skywalker to come save her.

“Thank you, Grandfather.” Because his fingertips still spark in warning, Rey knows she must appease the monster she’s embraced.

“We must tell your mother and father the joyous news.” He turns toward the door, maintaining a razor-sharp grip on her hands that forces her to follow. “Coruscant’s heir has returned. Your nursemaid would have been so pleased to see you’ve returned… if she could still see.”

Rotted plums and ash. Their thumping feet on the heavy carpet. Kylo’s faint groans. Rey clings to it all so that she won’t fall. The idea of Maz injured on her behalf prompts her to turn around, scour the room for Kylo’s sword, and envision lopping her grandfather’s head off.

Suddenly her world freezes. Even if his hand wasn’t wrapped tight around hers, Rey would still follow him out the study and down the hall, ready to face her parents or the court or her dear injured nursemaid because the silvery curse demands her compliance. And Rey’s not strong enough to resist.

Steel flashes into view, a sword point arresting their flight.

“You can’t take her,” Ben croaks. His entire frame trembles as he levels his sword at Palpatine’s neck. It glows gold, like the vow he swore to help Rey escape. Seeing their bond fuel his magic warms Rey from her numb insides out even as her heart stutters. He seals their bond in blood, spearing Palpatine on the sword and painting his insides golden.

The emperor staggers, releasing Rey’s hand and for a moment, her hope returns. Then he spins, one hand pressed to his gut and the other outstretched. “A fatal mistake,” he snarls. With a snap of his wrist, Kylo’s dragged upright by some invisible force and pinned to the window, wriggling like a sandmoth on a pin as his glowing sword clatters to the ground and sputters out. “Listen to me, Rey. You must strike him down. It is your destiny.”

“I can’t,” she says, and it’s true, for she can’t imagine cutting down her only ally. Even if she could, she can’t conjure up more than a few purple sparks like she did in the forest. They fizzle from her fingertips, whipping the emperor into a bloodthirsty frenzy.

“But you can! Reach within yourself and give into the darkness you find.”

The command leaves Rey no choice, reducing her world to silver as she’s forced to turn inward and stoke the monster he wants her to become. Some part of her balks as she roots deep within her psyche. She finds the darkness easily enough, writhing for release after years of subjugation under her grandfather’s thumb. But drawing on that darkness to manipulate the Force is another matter. She claws and she tears, but the darkness only pulses deep inside.

Then she remembers Kylo’s explanations, Maz’s bedtime stories. The Force binds together all living creatures, a delicate web. A balance. She needs only reach out—just so—and those webs spring to life in her mind, visceral enough for her to reach out and touch. One flick of her wrist sends a cord springing in an exchange of energy. She opens her eyes to discover swirling purple sparks and a greedy expression obscuring Palpatine’s anger.

“Kill him,” he seethes. “Do it now.”

Their silver bond constricts Rey’s chest and throat, demanding that she obey. The longer she fights it, the weaker she grows, sweat dripping down her chest and muscles quivering as she tries to lock her arms to her sides. Then her world explodes, silver and gold tearing apart the study and driving Rey to her knees.

Minutes pass, or maybe hours, before Rey can yank herself to her feet and survey the room. Books and splintered pottery lay strewn across the floor, their shelves busted and the windows fractured. The desk has split down the middle. A heap of black armor lays between it.

She runs to Kylo, yanking the helmet from his head, which lolls back, dangerously limp once she frees it. His ashen face, bloodied lips, and bruised nose accuse her of not interfering soon enough. _Your fault_ , they chant. His seizing muscles have finally stilled. Understanding the Force as a web of energy rather than a weapon allows Rey to pluck at the strands surrounding Kylo, sensing the golden curse that bound their lives together has dissolved. She notes the tangled threads under his gauntlets, gloves, and greaves. She tears off the scorched black armor piece by piece, revealing burns and bruises, shattered bones and weeping wounds, all gifts from her grandfather.

The empire, her crown, her freedom—she’d trade it all to bring Kylo back to life and she hates herself for it because she doesn’t know if he’d do the same in her position. That doesn’t stop her from pressing her hands to his charred chest and trying to save him anyway.

She doesn’t know what to say or what to do to channel the Force into healing magic. Already her skin prickles differently than it did when she aimed to destroy. Making requires more effort than unmaking, Kylo had said, words that have felt empty until Rey faces the task of making him whole again. “Be with me,” she whispers as she tugs at her life force, so stubborn and cumbersome, so fiercely hers. “Be with me,” she whispers as she nudges that wisp of herself at the burns scoring Kylo’s body, at the cracks in his bones and the fractures in his mind. “Be with me,” she whispers as she sends purple sparks skittering down his limbs and into his skin, just like she felt him do for her atop a sand dune in Tatooine.

She sends wave after wave of her energy to mend his wounds, to bind them together in this endeavor called life, and receives in return only darkness. Silence. Stillness. No matter what she says or what she pulls from her ribs, he refuses to wake. So she stands once the fragile Force web reassures her that all of his major injuries have been healed, that she has restored him to physical health. Still he doesn’t stir, not even when Rey removes her hands from his chest.

A faint citrus smell clings to her nostrils, crowding out the rotted plums and bitter malla petals until all that’s left is an unfamiliar copper tang coating her mouth. Her grandfather’s body lays crumpled at her feet, blood pooling onto her boots, but her feet won’t move. She doesn’t remember how to make them. Then it hits her, the Force exhaustion that Maz and Kylo warned her about. It mixes with the copper and citrus, and bile rises to meet it.

Rey can’t choke it back.

It burns in all the wrong places, reminding her of the parricide that she committed, of the throne she may still be bound to. A distant keening rings in her ears, maybe her own voice or the voice of an empire falling into ruin without its leader. She stumbles back from her grandfather and collapses in a heap in the furthest corner from his corpse.

She hears Kylo before she sees him rise, his bones creaking as he picks himself up and approaches her unsteadily. She refuses to unspool her arms from her head, to open her eyes and face the man who brought her back to face her nightmare. She waits for him to explain, to remind her that she’s free only because he orchestrated it, to thank her for saving his life. But it never comes.

Instead he bends at her side, his bare hands clasping her hands, then her shoulders, then her waist. “I know you’re exhausted. Believe me, I know. But guards will knock down this study door looking for the emperor. They find us here, there’s no escape.” He tugs her upright, letting her lean on him for support. On her feet Rey wobbles, but she ignores the impulses to collapse again. There’s only one way out if she wants to leave this life behind.

So she lets Kylo—Ben—steady her until she can hold the forgotten sword, until she can tiptoe after him over her grandfather’s corpse and into the hall. Drafty and empty, it promises a clean escape until marching feet echo down its length. “The Order of the Storm,” he growls, pulling Rey into an alcove that allows for no room between them. Pressed together, their hearts thump a two-time prayer, begging the guards to pass by the open study door and leave their alcove undiscovered. But Rey’s prayers often go unanswered. Today is no exception.

They hear a knight call, “Your Majesty?” They hear the shuffle of armored boots as the call goes unanswered and worry ripples through the squad. They hear the guards march into the study, the bloodstained carpet muffling their feet. They hear shouts as the knights sworn to protect the emperor’s life with their own discover his corpse.

Order abandoned, the knights clamber from the study down the hall, their captain shouting orders to split up and look for the killers. “They can’t get far.”

Kylo tenses at the declaration. “We need your magic,” he murmurs to Rey as the footsteps clatter in their direction. Their alcove is too shallow to tuck both of them into darkness. Discovery is inevitable should the knights continue in this direction.

“I can’t,” she says, too drained from the healing. Instead of pushing her like her grandfather would, Kylo hands her his sword instead.

“Strike up,” he reminds her, and then he leaps from their corridor, tugging at the Force that weaves around them, converting life to death in a blaze of red glitter and singed metal.

Back to back, side by side, Rey and Kylo hack through the Order of the Storm until the corridor is littered with polished steel and groaning guards. As the last assailant falls, so does Rey, her legs giving out after what seem to be hours of standing. As her world goes dark again, Kylo’s there to catch her, the last of his red sparks guiding her into a dreamless sleep.

* * *

Atop a hill beyond the Imperial City’s walls Rey and Kylo pause, dismounting and looping their horses’ reins around a tree so they can better drink in the chaos unfolding in the distance. Their horses stamp impatiently as the temple bells peel a mournful wail. Even from here, Rey fancies she can make out shouts ringing through the city streets.

Sneaking out of the palace and city was easy enough as it crumbled into chaos with news of the emperor’s death and no heir to be found. No one paid any mind to the two cloaked travelers trotting toward the city gates, even if one of them was swaying in the saddle. Now without the Order of the Storm trailing them, they can afford to stop. To breathe. To rest, if only momentarily, as fat raindrops begin to fall. They speckle the parched dirt underfoot, wash away the blood spattering Rey’s cheeks, and disguise her prickling tears despite her best efforts to hold them in.

Finally she is free.

As the funeral bells toll, Rey wonders how her mother will respond now that her father’s dead and her only child’s missing. Will she ascend the throne, Rey’s father at her side? Will her neck bear the weight of the crown without anyone to hold up her chin?

Then Kylo’s face flickers into view by her side as he takes off his helmet, the only piece of his grandfather’s armor that he salvaged from the study. He watches the city devolve into mayhem with a grim smile on his face, and Rey loses all thoughts of her mother. Perhaps it’s best to let the past die, as Kylo urged. There’s nothing left for them in Coruscant anyway.

Them.

With Vader’s curse dissolved and Kylo’s vow fulfilled, there’s no golden thread binding them together. No reason for them to stick together. The thought should sting, but after Kylo’s betrayal, it just leaves Rey empty. He dragged her back to the palace, not to enact vengeance on behalf of Vader as Rey feared, but to free her from the emperor as best he knew how. Now she doesn’t have to run. But now their kisses have soured; their bodies have drifted apart. There’s nothing left for Rey in Coruscant, and she’s not sure there’s much left for her with Kylo.

Ben.

His true name slips awkwardly off her tongue, falling flat when she tries it out for the first time. He takes pity on her flustered delivery, telling her that Kylo’s just fine, except Rey wants no more masks between them. “Only the truth,” she demands and he bows his head in agreement.

“Now what?” she asks. “Where do we go from here?” The questions knife through the rain, which has begun to fall in earnest now, and the silence that has sprung up between them.

“I don’t know,” he admits, setting his helmet in the dust that’s rapidly becoming mud and letting his hands fall awkwardly at his side. Then he holds out his arms to Rey, stiffly as though he expects rejection. She folds herself into his body like they’ve had a lifetime to practice, rather than a few weeks on the road, and then it hits her. At present they may not have answers, but together they have time to figure them out. So they stand like that for a long time, finding freedom in the rain that washes them clean.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tomorrow the final chapter brings renewal, healing, and hope for Rey in an unexpected source.


	7. The Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In Chandrila, Rey discovers healing with Ben by her side.

They sail to Chandrila, casting their surnames overboard and trading their coin for a small beachside cottage with only one bed. Sometimes Rey wakes screaming, rotted plums on her lips. Ben holds her until the nightmares dissolve and the sea lulls her back to sleep. At night, she doesn’t shy away from his touch at night, but awkwardness settles around them with the morning fog. The Force may heal living creatures, yet it cannot repair their ruptured trust.

That comes with time. To Ben’s credit, he doesn’t push her. He allows her space to lounge under the gnarled tintolive tree that grows alongside their cottage. He brings her orcanthus seeds from the market and clears the balmgrass from their yard so she can plant them in the spring. He introduces her to the seed seller, a woman aptly named Rose, who becomes a fixture at their cottage. He lets Rey grow, along with the seeds, into a version of herself she never thought she could become. Instead of expensive perfumes, she smells of dirt and sea-salt. Instead of keeping elaborate gowns clean, her skirts hems grow muddy and sandy by turns until she adopts a tunic and breeches made popular among the lower classes. Instead of acquiescing to other’s tastes, she practices developing her own. Through it all, Ben stays by her side, a guide and supporter, never an emperor.

One night under a blanket of stars enveloping the sky, her lips find his again. It’s softer than their first kiss, less certain but more understanding. Her lips are chapped, his hair windblown, but they learn how to fit together again like they did so easily a continent away.

In the years that follow, he teaches her how to swim. She tells him old children’s stories and learns to best him with a sword. In her heart, Rey knows she won’t stop looking over her shoulder, but when old fears strike, she grounds herself in the icy ocean’s surf, in Ben’s warm touch and the crinkles bordering his eyes when he smiles.

Some days they wake early to tend their garden, visit the market, walk the shore at sunrise. Other days they lounge in bed until the sun peaks above their little hut, exploring new ways to affirm their feelings for each other in the way their bodies meld.

So this is happiness, Rey realizes one day—weaving their own glittering threads to tether themselves together, threads woven from a thousand shared smiles and a thousand shared nights. They need no magic to pledge their vows. Vows written in the gentle pressure of Rey’s hand against Ben’s back. Vows baked into the honey cakes he learns how to make for her, working by trial and error until they melt in her mouth. Vows knitted into their skin as they heal each other’s wounds in flurries of purple and red sparks.

They’ve traded their royal heritages for a hut by the ocean, so when they marry, there are no brocade gowns or embroidered tunics, no Coruscanti rings to exchange or Chandrilan net-weaving rituals to perform. Their ceremony is simple, a local Pontifex speaking the same vows that Ben’s parents exchanged years before on Chandrilan soil. They seal their promises with a kiss that tastes like sunlight.

Of her own volition she gives her heart to Ben and learns the truth of Maz’s wisdom: for what she gives him, she receives in equal measure forevermore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentine's, [ dustoftheancients](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dustoftheancients/pseuds/dustoftheancients)! It was a pleasure to write for you again this year. :)
> 
> Sending thanks to my alpha and beta readers, [ astraea](https://twitter.com/rxyaldyad) and [ Padawan_Writer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Padawan_Writer/pseuds/Padawan_Writer), as well as the wonderful [ RFFA mods](https://reylofanfictionanthology.tumblr.com) who organized this event! If y'all are in the mood for more Reylo stories, check out the 2021 RFFA Valentine's exchange, [To Find Your Kiss](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/RFFA_To_Find_Your_Kiss).


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